{"id":7273,"date":"2013-12-17T13:30:40","date_gmt":"2013-12-17T13:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/178.62.14.192\/?p=7273"},"modified":"2013-12-17T13:30:40","modified_gmt":"2013-12-17T13:30:40","slug":"internet-controlled-raspberrypi-christmas-decoration-using-piringo-4tronix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.recantha.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7273","title":{"rendered":"Internet-controlled #RaspberryPi Christmas decoration using PiRingo @4tronix_uk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/h2>\n

The PiRingo is a lovely little board from 4tronix<\/a>. It has a ring of 12 LEDs and two switches and is plugged directly into the GPIO socket of the Pi. It comes in 5 different flavours (which are basically just different combinations of LED colours): I went with the Fairy Lights design which included 3 blues, 3 reds, 2 yellows, 2 greens and 2 whites.<\/p>\n

You can read more about the PiRingo over at the 4tronix website<\/a>\u00a0and you can\u00a0purchase it for \u00a38.30 (ish) here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Solder and set-up<\/h2>\n

It took about 45 minutes to solder (but I enjoy soldering and took my time!) and I plugged it straightaway into my new Chinese Raspberry Pi (one of the red ones). If you’re going to do this, I recommend starting with a new image of Raspbian. I tried with an existing install and didn’t have much luck with it – I think it has something to do with the serial port being enabled and having a console run on it. But no matter, I had a spare SD card and it only took half an hour to download and write the image.<\/p>\n

What do I do with it?<\/h2>\n

I then had to decide what to do with it. We happened to be watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory at the time and the boys had rigged their apartment’s electrical equipment up so that it could be controlled by anyone anywhere over the internet. \u00a0Aha! I thought. Internet-controlled Christmas decoration!<\/p>\n

First of all, I wrote a Python script which simply cycled the 12 LEDs in a circuit. Note to the wise: don’t stare at the lights! That script can be found on GitHub<\/a>.<\/p>\n